carlina rivera

Lifelong Lower East Side resident Carlina Rivera is a frontrunner to be a City Council member representing District 2, where her current boss Rosie Mendez is on the way out. She’s racked up at least $176,000 in fundraising and she received praise and promises of votes when she attended an anti-Starbucks rally in the East Village last month. If Rivera wins the primary election on September 12, she’ll continue her campaign to represent the East Village, Gramercy Park, Kips Bay, Lower East Side, Murray Hill and Rose Hill. We met with her at Alphabet City’s Ninth Street Espresso to talk about her campaign, local issues, and her sheroes.

Nearly 50 residents, small business owners, activists and crusties alike attended an anti-Starbucks rally Thursday evening in the East Village.The crowd gathered at St. Marks and Avenue A, where the chain plans to open a new store, to discuss what another Starbucks would mean for the community. Increased corporate presence, increased rents, increased tenant harassment, increased property taxes, increased vacant properties, decreased retail diversity, decreased community involvement– the list of fears went on.

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Bedford + Bowery is where downtown Manhattan and north Brooklyn intersect. Produced by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in collaboration with New York magazine, B + B covers the East Village, Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, and beyond. Want to contribute? Send a tip? E-mail the editor.